HD is to Wii as PC is to HD

[vlad321]

Mendicate Bias said:

vlad321 said:

Mendicate Bias said:
Hey vlad I have a serious question. I know you think console games are all shovelware and suck so I'm wondering how you rank Half-Life 2? I'm only asking because I recently purchased The Orange Box and I played through the game and all its episodes for the first time so I want to see how you feel about the game personally. I haven't played Portal or Team Fortress yet though so I don't have opinions on those games yet.

I thought Half-Life 2 was pretty fucking amazing. Mostly because of the way the tory was told (you never see anythign other than what Gordon sees) and the fact that in a given 30 minute period you are not gonna be doing the same thing. You are either surviving zombies, driving a boat, a car, defending from ant lions, fighting gun ships, defending a prison, etc. Graphics are oldish but I never put value on graphics anyhow. Portal on the other hand I have to tell you is abslutely amazing and one of the best games to come out in the past 4 or 5 years, if not the best.

I agree, the physics puzzles were amazing, the shooting mechanics are solid, the story intriguing and I like the fact that you stay in first person the whole time. I did have a couple problems with it though. One was the loading times. I hated the fact that the game had to stop and load level segments. It wasn't really because I had to wait a few seconds to play again but because I felt like it discouraged me to explore since I was always worried about going through a hall and passing a load checkpoint forcing me to go back through the checkpoint to explore the rooms I hadn't been to yet or blocking off the previous map entirely. I wish they had implemented level streaming like most games today do.  Also the AI for the common soldiers was bothersome too, although Alyx's AI was superb. I actually got pinned in a corner by an AI companion once and he wouldn't move so I was stuck and had to reload the level.

Another problem I had with the game was trying to understand the story. I get the gist of it but I wish they had placed hidden terminals explaining the back story in more depth like in Halo 3 or audio logs like in Bioshock. For me story is a huge element in a game and Half-Life has such a rich universe I just wish they had gone into more depth with the story or at least given the curious player mechanics for uncovering the deeper story.

Overall though most everything I complained about are small nitpicks and I won't even bother going into what I liked about the game cause I could go on for a while. I also have to say I thought Episode 2, although short had the best gameplay experience and story out of all the other Half-Lifes. I was actually worried for Alyx when she was struck down by the Hunters and its very hard for a game to make me care about its characters.

Basically the fact that the developers didn't treat the gamer as a child and forced us to figure out puzzles on our own was amazing and I see why you think PC games are the best, they never hold your hands and guide you. But I disagree with you and think that consoles have games that can give you the same deep experience as PC games, you just have to look a little harder for them.

A lot of the story is told by the world. There are newspaper clippings in the doctor's office at the very beginning showing the UN burning and mentioning the 7 hour war and stuff. Also the voice overs of Breen saying what has been happening and stuff, such as the inablity to procreate, and what the Combine are doing to humanity, especially evident later by the stalkers. The vortigaunts also drops hints, such ass what happened at Xen and stuff. There's a site that has pieced everythign together and I remember looking at it and noticing that I missed a whole lot of story info while playing through the game.